I never thought I would make national news for telling people how to get rid of grease stains.
But starting Laundry Sauce has led to some pretty unexpected headlines.
Just in time for your Labor Day BBQ, I was honored to be featured in TODAY. They asked me to dish out tips on how to rescue your favorite clothes from burger blowouts and other greasy mishaps. You can bookmark the article before you fire up the grill this weekend.
This whole experience got me thinking about the reality of building a brand. When Ian Blair and I first sketched out the vision for Laundry Sauce, I had a lot of big goals on my whiteboard. Build an 8-figure business. Disrupt a legacy CPG category. Create a financially abundant future for our family.
Becoming a national stain removal expert was definitely not on that list.
But that is exactly how entrepreneurship works. You start with a massive vision. Then you realize that winning requires getting your hands dirty in the trenches.
The Playbook Is Cooked
If you are building a DTC brand right now, you already know this. The era of printing money with ads is over. That playbook is cooked.
You cannot just spin up a Shopify store, run some Facebook ads, and expect to scale to $30M. Customers are smarter than that. The market is incredibly crowded. Customer acquisition costs are through the roof.
To stand out today, you need a relentless focus on excellence. You need a product that actually works. If customers do not want it, retail will not save you. Fancy marketing will not save you.
We built Laundry Sauce to be a premium experience. We took inspiration from luxury fragrance houses like Le Labo and Maison Francis Kurkdjian. But at the end of the day, it is laundry detergent. It has to clean your damn clothes. It has to get the burger grease out of your expensive shirt.
When you focus entirely on making the best possible product, unexpected things happen. National news outlets start calling you for advice.
Earned Media Cuts Through The BS
Right now, every brand is fighting for the same exact pixels on a screen.
When you rely entirely on paid media, you are renting your audience. The moment you turn off the ad spend, the traffic stops. We spend money on ads at Laundry Sauce. Every brand does. But the long game is building actual trust.
Earned media like a TODAY article does something ads cannot do. It builds instant authority. When a national publisher points to you as the expert, that moves the needle. It tells the consumer that you are not just another operation looking for a quick flip. You are a real company with real operators.
But you cannot fake this kind of PR. You cannot hack your way into genuine authority. It comes from thousands of hours of testing formulations, managing 3PLs, and knowing your business from the ground up.
Doing Things That Do Not Scale
I listen to David Senra on the Founders Podcast a lot. He constantly reminds us that the best founders refuse to be purely theoretical. People like Sam Zemurray, the Banana King, built empires because they understood every single detail of their operation.
As a founder, you cannot outsource your product knowledge. You have to be the expert.
Here is what I have learned about getting real attention for your brand:
- 🧪Solve a painful problem. A grease stain on a favorite shirt is a real pain point. We solve it.
- 🎯Stay scrappy. Do not wait for a glossy Forbes cover. Provide value where your customers actually live and read.
- 🤝Own the details. Know the science behind your product. Be ready to explain it simply to anyone.
- ✅Focus on the product. Good press is just a byproduct of building something legit.
- ❌Ignore the noise. Critics do not know sh*t. Keep your head down and keep building.
A lot of founders get distracted by the vanity metrics of running a business. They want the headline without putting in the reps. But busy is not the same as better. Stay focused on getting sh*t done for your customer.
Enjoy The Adventure
Running a business is hard. Raising a family is harder. But you do not have to choose between building a business and enjoying your life.
One of my core personal missions is to enjoy the adventure. Getting featured in TODAY for talking about burger grease is fun. It is a win we get to celebrate as a team. It is something I can smile about with my wife Ashley and our daughter.
We take our business incredibly seriously. We are building a massive CPG brand. But we do not take ourselves too seriously. You have to laugh at the unexpected places this journey takes you.
If you are a founder dealing with the daily grind of supply chains, team building, and P&L statements, remember to look up. Celebrate the weird wins. Have fun with it. It is never too late to change the game so you actually enjoy playing it.
Keep Going
This weekend is Labor Day. It is a time to step away from the keyboard. Put the phone on do not disturb. Spend some quality present time with your family.
Fire up the grill. Eat the burger. Do not stress if things get messy.
If your favorite shirt needs saving after a burger blowout, you know who to call. Check out my full feature in TODAY right here: https://www.today.com/shop/how-to-remove-oil-grease-stains-rcna204977
Keep going.